Experiences of Farmers in India Experiences of Farmers in ... - AgSri

Orissa
Surendra Masti
Mahadeiput,
Koraput (D.t)
Orissa
Contact:
Mr. Prabhakar Adhikari,
Pragati, Koraput, Orissa.
Ph: 9437025045
Age: 38
Education: 10 th class
Family size: Seven
Occupation(s): Agriculture
No. of years in farming: 20
Paddy cultivation
Surendra Masti owns 12 acres of land out of which 2 acres are low land, 1 acre
medium land and the rest 9 acres are uplands. He depends on monsoon for agriculture
activities as there is no other means of irrigation. If there is failure or irregularity of
monsoon, it will be difficult period for the family. Out of his total landholding, he
raises paddy in only 6 acres of land (2 acres low land, 1 acre medium land and 3
acres upland). Yield from up land is very low i.e. 4 to 5 q/acre and in the low lands it
is 11 to 12 q/acre. But this yield feeds the family only for six months and for the other
half of the year they have to purchase rice for consumption.
SRI adoption
He got an opportunity to attend trainings on SRI organized by Pragati, a local NGO,
in 2006 but he was not at all convinced. Again before kharif 2007, he participated in
a training on SRI & Sustainable Agriculture. In the mean time, he had seen another
farmer of a nearby village adopting SRI and got impressed by the increased yield.
He was tempted to try out for himself, though with a lot of doubt in heart. He decided
to do SRI in only 40 cents (0.4 acre) of medium land in kharif 2007.
He stuck to the practices he had learnt during training. He had prepared the land with
drainage channels, so that the field wouldn’t be flooded with water, raised a nursery
bed to prepare seedlings by applying cow dung compost and Vermicompost. He had
prepared seedlings from 700 gm of Khandagiri variety of seeds. He prepared the
seedbed, covered with the soil mixture and after broadcasting the seeds covered
the bed with Vermicompost. Transplantation was made when the seedlings were
12 days old. He also maintained proper spacing of 25 cm 2 (line to line and plant to
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